A state appeals court has rejected claims of employment discrimination leveled by a fired professor at the renowned Culinary Institute of America, pointing to the former chef and restaurant owner's inability to counter the institute's firing him for his alleged "demeaning and insulting behavior towards students for years."

An Appellate Division, Second Department panel has ruled that Clemens Averbeck, who was a faculty member at the Culinary Institute's 170-acre Hudson Valley campus for nearly eight years, "failed to raise a triable issue of fact" after the institute moved for dismissal of his discrimination lawsuit against it while presenting a "legitimate, nondiscriminatory, and nonpretextual reason" for firing him.

Averbeck, who was born and raised in Germany and who was on the Culinary Institute's faculty from 2004 to 2012, launched his lawsuit in Dutchess County Supreme Court in 2014. He claimed he was wrongfully terminated on the basis of his national origin, according to the panel's decision.

More specifically, he contended that one of his supervisors "had mocked his accent" and that he was fired "on grounds not generally applied to American professors," the panel wrote. He brought his lawsuit for damages under state Executive Law § 296, which addresses unlawful discriminatory practices, the panel noted.

In affirming Dutchess County Supreme Court Justice Christine Sproat's 2017 summary judgment dismissal of the suit, the unanimous panel wrote that "here, the [institute] satisfied its burden on its motion … by establishing a legitimate, nondiscriminatory, and nonpretextual reason for terminating [Averbeck's] employment."

Continuing, the panel said that the institute had "submitted evidence that it had been receiving student complaints about the plaintiff's demeaning and insulting behavior towards students for years, that it had disciplined and warned the plaintiff multiple times that he needed to improve on how he communicated with students, that it issued the plaintiff a final warning about his treatment of students, and that the plaintiff's employment was terminated following an investigation by an independent investigator, which occurred after the defendant received another complaint regarding the plaintiff's conduct."

Given that the Culinary Institute had established, prima facie, the absence of circumstances giving rise to an inference of discrimination, the panel wrote, the burden "shifted to [Averbeck] to demonstrate the existence of a triable issue of fact as to whether the reason given for his termination was merely pretextual," citing Singh v Covenant Aviation Sec., LLC.

Averbeck didn't raise a triable issue of fact, wrote Justices Reinaldo Rivera, Joseph Maltese, Francesca Connolly and Valerie Brathwaite Nelson, because he "failed to demonstrate how one colleague's insult about his nationality six years prior to his termination and how one supervisor's comments mocking his accent one year prior to his termination had any causal relationship with his termination following years of student complaints and warnings from the defendant."

"Further, [he] failed to demonstrate that his termination was the result of disparate treatment due to his national origin," the justices wrote, since "his colleagues were not similarly situated to him and their conduct was not comparable to his," citing Ruiz v. County of Rockland.

An attorney for Averbeck, Michael Sussman of Sussman & Associates in Goshen, New York, said in a voice message Friday that he believes there was sufficient evidence put forward by Averbeck for the case to go to a jury.

He added that, in his view, both the lower court and the Second Department panel engaged in fact-finding and ended up resolving questions "that only a jury should resolve in our [legal] system."

"I'm distressed by the outcome," he also said. By email he added that he and his client intend to seek leave to appeal the panel's decision.

Greg Riolo, a principal at Jackson Lewis in Albany who represented the Culinary Institute of America, could not be reached for comment.

Today, Averbeck is listed as a program coordinator and faculty member at Houston Community College in Texas, according to the college's website. A linked curriculum vitae on the website lists him as having been an assistant professor at the Culinary Institute. It also shows that he's held notable positions in the past, such as as executive banquet chef at the famed, former Plaza Hotel in Manhattan, and that he owned several food establishments in Senden, Germany in the 1990s and early 2000s, including one restaurant "consistently" ranked by a German magazine as among the 25 best in Germany.

The Culinary Institute, according to its website, has locations in New York State, California and Texas. In New York, its sprawling campus is in the Hudson River Valley. The website boasts that the institute has "expert faculty with real-world industry success," as well as students from more than 45 countries.